British fashion designer Mary Quant, who has died aged 93, was famously associated with the miniskirt, the fashion symbol of the 1960s which shocked the establishment and defined the era. Her shop Bazaar, in Chelsea, which she opened with her husband Alexander Plunket Greene in 1955, was the first to offer cheap clothes to an emerging youth market with their own independent incomes, and the mini – between 4 and 10 inches (10cm to 25cm) above the knee – was their defiant teenage expression.
Quant preferred flat shoes, opaque tights and her short cropped hair was created by celebrated hairdresser Vidal Sassoon. That, along with her taste for striped sweaters, became her signature look, even into her 80s when she would regularly attend Jasper Conran’s catwalk shows.
Born in 1930 in London, she was the daughter of Welsh teachers and studied illustration and art at Goldsmiths College, London. She completed an apprenticeship with the milliner Erik of Brook Street and began working in fashion proper in 1955, with the opening of Bazaar.
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It is hard now to understand the power of her influence and the shock of the new coltish, childlike fashion of the time that focused attention on long legs when tights with all kinds of decorative effects in all colours replaced stockings and suspenders. “Good designers must catch the spirit of the day. The whole point of fashion is to make fashionable clothes available to everyone,” she once said. Some of her most famous designs included PVC raincoats, skinny rib sweaters, hot pants, jersey dresses and one piece suits called “onesies”. She also challenged established gender norms by promoting trousers and suits as fashionable womenswear.
These youthful, versatile clothes were an instant success and within seven years of setting up her business it was reportedly worth a £1 million and supplying 150 shops in the UK and some 320 stores in the US. Her success encouraged young designers in fashion and art schools to set up on their own and made London the epicentre of fashion, challenging the then dominance of Paris. The fashion revolution also mirrored a new era of freedom and experimentation in music and art dubbed the “youthquake”.
She created her own cosmetics line and her “paintbox” make-up sets became bestsellers. In the 1980s she concentrated on cosmetics and household goods, as well as clothing and in 1988 designed the interior of the Mini with red seat belts and a steering wheel that featured her signature daisy logo. She also collaborated with high-street department store JC Penney in the US with a line of pinafores and party dresses.
As well as hemlines, she could make other kinds of headlines; when she persuaded her husband to trim her pubic hair into a heart and announced it to the press, it created a sensation. “John Lennon adored it and sent me various ideas for other shapes I could try,” she wrote in her second autobiography in 2012.
Throughout her career she received numerous awards and accolades for her contribution to fashion including an OBE in 1966 and a DBE in 2015. In 1973 her contribution to British culture was marked by an exhibition in the London Museum and in 2019 a big retrospective of her work was held in the V&A highlighting her influence on fashion.
A pioneer, she will be long remembered for her originality and style and for making the world of fashion more democratic.
